Get Your ‘Phil’ of Days of Our Lives’ Most Complicated Heir-Head On the Anniversary of His ‘Rebirth’
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Just days after Christmas, Days of Our Lives fans get to celebrate another birthday, of sorts. It was 25 years ago today when Jay Kenneth Johnson first debuted as a teenaged Philip Kiriakis in one of soapdom’s most extreme cases of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome ever committed to film.
Philip, you see, had been born on screen just four years earlier in 1995. And then, in 1999, the 4-year-old turned 16, and he had a slew of teenage problems to deal with. Say what you want about Philip, but his life’s never been dull. Over the years, Johnson took Philip from bad boy to bad guy, but no matter how reprehensible his actions, he never let the tortured Kiriakis lose his heart. Though sometimes, we have to admit, we’ve had a harder time of finding it than others.
To say he’s complicated would be an understatement. But what else can we expect from the offspring of Kate Roberts and Victor Kiriakis, carried to term and given birth to by Vivian Alamain? Heroism doesn’t exactly run in his veins — but a strong independent streak certainly does.
When Johnson first brought Philip back for his most recent stint, we were convinced he needed to get back together with his first love, Chloe. Boy, did that take a dark turn.
Still, it’s hard not to feel at least a little sympathy for the Kiriakis scion. Things just never seem to work out for him. He joined the military and went after bad guys like Tony DiMera, only to lose a leg and need a face transplant in the process.
He’s fathered four kids — or so he thought at one time or another — but has ended up childless. Claire belonged to Shawn, Parker was Daniel’s, Melanie miscarried, and Tyler… Well, Tyler’s been living with a foster family his entire life.
But more often than not, we’ve got to admit that much of Philip’s misfortune is his own doing. Chloe moved on with Brady all those years ago because Philip shamed and dumped her after nude photos of her turned up. He lost Belle to Shawn but tried winning her back by blackmailing his ex back into bed. And then there was his business feud with John, which culminated in Philip planting drugs on the Basic Black owner’s ships. His attempts to do right are so often thwarted by his instincts to do wrong.
Philip is, in short, complex, and that’s part of the reason he’s been in and out of Salem so often over the years. From time to time he needs to leave, reset, come back and try his hand at life in Salem one more time before it goes horribly wrong. That’s why, after his last exit to seek mental help, he returned (played once again by John Paul Lavoisier) as a calmer, gentler man, more back to his troubled but generally well-meaning roots.
And now Lavoisier has brought him back once again, staking his (illegal) claim to Victor’s legacy and company. How long he’ll stick around this time is up in the air. Even if he and Xander do make running Titan together work, eventually, folks are going to find out that Victor’s letter is a fake. And at that point, we’ve got a feeling it’ll be bye-bye Philip once again, off to reset before his next return.